January 13, 2021
Wow, what drama.
Unfortunate drama, that is.
I've never had any election issues go past the election itself and thought this series would wind up with the Georgia runoff, but due to President Trump's machinations to remain in office, which featured a campaign designed to overturn the election which seems to run all the way back in origin to prior to it, and which maintained falsely that he'd actually won it, and which caused an insurrection which briefly took the capitol, this one is still running.
Today the United States House of Representatives will vote to impeach Donald Trump a second time. And this time, Wyoming's Liz Cheney will vote for impeachment.
Cheney and the President's relationship had already soured before the insurrection. He named her specifically as a solicitation that his supporters had to "get rid of" for her refusal to support the effort to toss out the electoral vote of some states and she'd written a 21 page letter urging House members not to go along with the effort. This puts her at least theoretically at odds with the leadership of the state's GOP which has refused to assign blame for the insurrection, a position which Park County's GOP adopted just yesterday.
Irrespective of how some people may wish to view this, it's now very clear there's going to be a major reckoning and Trump's efforts destroyed the anticipated Republican retention of the Senate by eliminating the narrow band of support for their two candidates in Georgia. That gave the Senate to the Democrats. And the Republican Party itself is severing rapidly into two parties. Out in the hinterlands that may not be obvious, but the Trump wing of the party is spinning into its own minority party which will receive next to no support on anything from Congress. Added to that, the mainstream conservative Republicans are shoving the Trump wing out, something they'd long wished to do, extremely rapidly. The impacts of this are going to be felt immediately in Washington but will take longer elsewhere where, as in Wyoming, the Trump wing experienced advances in the last election.
As part of all of this, Mitch McConnell, the powerful leader of the Senate, appears to have rapidly evolved on the impeachment and is now welcoming it as a vehicle to kill off the Trump wing of the party. This means that the upcoming impeachment trial, which still appears likely to occur after Biden (which appears legally problematic to me) will feature a lot of negative and shocking information as McConnell will not prevent in any fashion Schumer, who will then lead the Senate, from doing so and will in fact likely aid him behind the scenes.
An off possibility remains that the impeachment trial may still occur prior to the inauguration.
Pressure remains on Vice President Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment, but he clearly is not inclined to do so. As part of this the House voted yesterday to request Vice President Pence to invoke the 25th.
A new Constitutional provision is now in the news as well, that being Amendment 14 § 3 which provides:
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
This section seems to have been first mentioned by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and it is now getting serious attention. Oscasio-Cortez gave an impassioned delivery that mentioned it on this past week's This Week which was followed by a Republican who also mentioned he'd vote for impeachment. AoC's point was that all vehicles needed to be pursued, which included a reference to the Fourteenth Amendment's provision that insurrectionist are not eligible for office.
Her view is that those in Congress who supported the electoral challenge should not be seated. And she's correct they do not have to be. It's highly unlikely that the Amendment will be applied that far, but there's a fair chance that Joe Hawley and Ted Cruz will feel its application.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff issued a statement to its soldiers reminding them of their duties and calling the insurrection. It's become distressingly clear that there were individual service members who participated in the insurrection as well as individual policemen.
As fallout from the insurrection, leaders of various European Union states snubbed Mike Pompeo and declined to meet with him this week, so he cancelled a fairly pointless trip to Europe that was to have occurred. Included in the snub was a statement from Luxembourg's foreign minister calling President Trump a "criminal".
Cont:
This week's past edition of This Week was remarkable in that every single member of the discussion panel was adamant that President Trump needs to be impeached, including Chris Christie. Christie referred to Trump's post election actions as "insane".
A glimpse of what Republican talking points may be like in the next few months was provided by Christie, who is very much now distancing himself from Trump and urging that Republicans present their policy talking points to the public, and who reminded the audience of how well the GOP had generally done in the election overall.
January 16, 2021
Wyoming's Republican Party issued a statement condemning Liz Cheney's vote to impeach President Trump. In a follow-up interview, Cheney did not back down from her vote.
January 19, 2021
News has been released that William Bar, former Attorney General and one of President Trump's most loyal supporters, prior to his resignation argued with Trump and told him that he needed to quit listening to people who were telling him he had won the election, as he had not. Trump reacted by referring to himself in the third person and that Barr must "hate" him. Bar called the theories that Trump had won the election "bullshit".
The head of Wyoming's Republican Party, in an interview on Steve Bannion's claimed that Western states were "paying attention" to the efforts of far right secessionist in Texas. When later asked about this he more or less disavowed the statement.
Cont:
If there was any doubt at all that the conservative "establishment" wing of the GOP has severed itself from the Trump wing, Mitch McConnell ended it with his opening remarks today when the Senate convened. Referring to the tine insurrection last week McConnell stated:
“The mob was fed lies,” and that; "They were provoked by the president and other powerful people.”
With his remarks powerful McConnell puts himself into the category of people outright condemning President Trump and demanding that the reality of Joe Biden's victory in November be accepted.
In contrast to this, we have the Trump of the party, perhaps symbolized best in this thread by the head of the Wyoming GOP, who are refusing to acknowledge everything that McConnell just stated. McConnell's declarations make it clear where the conservative wing of the party and its resources are going. Trump has been dumped.
How this plays out is yet to be seen. We may be seeing a version of the 1912 Republican playbook in which the conservatives in the party formally split from the progressives, or rather vice versa, with the progressives actually forming their own de facto party. That may happen here yet, and that is the way it would have to happen. If the Trump wing wants to dominate a party, it's now going to have to form its own party. It doesn't matter if it had recently been in power. The progressives had been up until the 1912 elections as well. The conservatives are at the wheel and they're pulling away.
The lesson there was that the progressives couldn't make it on their own, and by 1916 they'd crawled back to the GOP. For those populists who want an ongoing role in the party, that's likely to be the same thing that we'll see here.
For the meantime, we can expect a lot of howling in the hinterlands, Wyoming included. The local party is now nearly solidly controlled by the Trump camp. McConnell has effectively told them that their now irrelevant. But that message isn't going to get through overnight. Chance are by 2024 it will have, if not be 2022.
The worm has turned on this one.
January 20, 2021
Two interesting columns ran today, the last, partial, day of the Trump Presidency in the Tribune.
One was by conservative columnist Cal Thomas. The Trib ran the headlines for this as the following:
Cal Thomas: What might've been ...
Thomas himself published it under the title "And Now, the End Is Near", referring to Frank Sinatra's famous song, My Way.
In his article, Thomas makes the interesting point:
Before he announced for president, if a pollster had asked voters whether they would vote to grant a second term for a president who has accomplished what Trump has in foreign and domestic policy, I suspect the response would have been a resounding “yes.”
History is full of incidents where people have self-destructed by giving in to the furies of their lower nature.
Thomas goes further and basically accepts that Trump has destroyed his legacy as he's afflicted with narcissistic personality disorder. He's not the first one to make this observation, but it's interesting in that Thomas is a conservative columnist fully accepting it.
There's a lot to this claim, and what Thomas notes. A conservative President with Trump's accomplishments likely would have been reelected even with all the negative things that happened. This would be even more the case if the entire first impeachment drama hadn't happened. But Trump himself spoiled that.
By doing so he's brought in a dynamic situation which conservatives may look back on as a turning point in the nation's history, and not in a way they would have preferred. On the same topic, the tribune ran a column by Robert Reich who argues for a no quarters approach by Biden with the GOP. It argues Biden can't govern from the center.
Why Biden Can’t Govern from the Center
The question may be more in the nature, for Biden, in "shouldn't" rather than "can't" but Reich doesn't view it that way. Of course conservatives, and many others, view it as "should".
The problem that Biden will face is this. Given the events of last week, he'll face very strong pressure from the left not to govern from the center. It'll require Mitch McConnell to recreate that center in the Senate, and the House GOP leadership to do it in the House. McConnell probably can and he's essentially declared war on the Trump wing of the part as of yesterday. It's much less clear that this can happen in the House.
And so we find ourselves in Inauguration Day.
January 21, 2021
Chief Justice Roberts, Vice President Harris, Speaker Pelosi, Leader Schumer, Leader McConnell, Vice President Pence, distinguished guests, and my fellow Americans.
This is America's day.
This is democracy's day.
A day of history and hope.
Of renewal and resolve.
Through a crucible for the ages America has been tested anew and America has risen to the challenge.
Today, we celebrate the triumph not of a candidate, but of a cause, the cause of democracy.
The will of the people has been heard and the will of the people has been heeded.
We have learned again that democracy is precious.
Democracy is fragile.
And at this hour, my friends, democracy has prevailed.
So now, on this hallowed ground where just days ago violence sought to shake this Capitol's very foundation, we come together as one nation, under God, indivisible, to carry out the peaceful transfer of power as we have for more than two centuries.
We look ahead in our uniquely American way - restless, bold, optimistic - and set our sights on the nation we know we can be and we must be.
I thank my predecessors of both parties for their presence here.
I thank them from the bottom of my heart.
You know the resilience of our Constitution and the strength of our nation.
As does President Carter, who I spoke to last night but who cannot be with us today, but whom we salute for his lifetime of service.
I have just taken the sacred oath each of these patriots took - an oath first sworn by George Washington.
But the American story depends not on any one of us, not on some of us, but on all of us.
On "We the People" who seek a more perfect Union.
This is a great nation and we are a good people.
Over the centuries through storm and strife, in peace and in war, we have come so far. But we still have far to go.
We will press forward with speed and urgency, for we have much to do in this winter of peril and possibility.
Much to repair.
Much to restore.
Much to heal.
Much to build.
And much to gain.
Few periods in our nation's history have been more challenging or difficult than the one we're in now.
A once-in-a-century virus silently stalks the country.
It's taken as many lives in one year as America lost in all of World War II.
Millions of jobs have been lost.
Hundreds of thousands of businesses closed.
A cry for racial justice some 400 years in the making moves us. The dream of justice for all will be deferred no longer.
A cry for survival comes from the planet itself. A cry that can't be any more desperate or any more clear.
And now, a rise in political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism that we must confront and we will defeat.
To overcome these challenges - to restore the soul and to secure the future of America - requires more than words.
It requires that most elusive of things in a democracy:
Unity.
Unity.
In another January in Washington, on New Year's Day 1863, Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
When he put pen to paper, the President said, "If my name ever goes down into history it will be for this act and my whole soul is in it."
My whole soul is in it.
Today, on this January day, my whole soul is in this:
Bringing America together.
Uniting our people.
And uniting our nation.
I ask every American to join me in this cause.
Uniting to fight the common foes we face:
Anger, resentment, hatred.
Extremism, lawlessness, violence.
Disease, joblessness, hopelessness.
With unity we can do great things. Important things.
We can right wrongs.
We can put people to work in good jobs.
We can teach our children in safe schools.
We can overcome this deadly virus.
We can reward work, rebuild the middle class, and make health care
secure for all.We can deliver racial justice.
We can make America, once again, the leading force for good in the world.
I know speaking of unity can sound to some like a foolish fantasy.
I know the forces that divide us are deep and they are real.
But I also know they are not new.
Our history has been a constant struggle between the American ideal that we are all created equal and the harsh, ugly reality that racism, nativism, fear, and demonization have long torn us apart.
The battle is perennial.
Victory is never assured.
Through the Civil War, the Great Depression, World War, 9/11, through struggle, sacrifice, and setbacks, our "better angels" have always prevailed.
In each of these moments, enough of us came together to carry all of us forward.
And, we can do so now.
History, faith, and reason show the way, the way of unity.
We can see each other not as adversaries but as neighbors.
We can treat each other with dignity and respect.
We can join forces, stop the shouting, and lower the temperature.
For without unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury.
No progress, only exhausting outrage.
No nation, only a state of chaos.
This is our historic moment of crisis and challenge, and unity is the path forward.
And, we must meet this moment as the United States of America.
If we do that, I guarantee you, we will not fail.
We have never, ever, ever failed in America when we have acted together.
And so today, at this time and in this place, let us start afresh.
All of us.
Let us listen to one another.
Hear one another.
See one another.Show respect to one another.
Politics need not be a raging fire destroying everything in its path.
Every disagreement doesn't have to be a cause for total war.
And, we must reject a culture in which facts themselves are manipulated and even manufactured.
My fellow Americans, we have to be different than this.
America has to be better than this.
And, I believe America is better than this.
Just look around.
Here we stand, in the shadow of a Capitol dome that was completed amid the Civil War, when the Union itself hung in the balance.
Yet we endured and we prevailed.
Here we stand looking out to the great Mall where Dr. King spoke of his dream.
Here we stand, where 108 years ago at another inaugural, thousands of protestors tried to block brave women from marching for the right to vote.
Today, we mark the swearing-in of the first woman in American history elected to national office - Vice President Kamala Harris.
Don't tell me things can't change.
Here we stand across the Potomac from Arlington National Cemetery, where heroes who gave the last full measure of devotion rest in eternal peace.
And here we stand, just days after a riotous mob thought they could use violence to silence the will of the people, to stop the work of our democracy, and to drive us from this sacred ground.
That did not happen.
It will never happen.
Not today.
Not tomorrow.
Not ever.
To all those who supported our campaign I am humbled by the faith you have placed in us.
To all those who did not support us, let me say this: Hear me out as we move forward. Take a measure of me and my heart.
And if you still disagree, so be it.
That's democracy. That's America. The right to dissent peaceably, within the guardrails of our Republic, is perhaps our nation's greatest strength.
Yet hear me clearly: Disagreement must not lead to disunion.
And I pledge this to you: I will be a President for all Americans.
I will fight as hard for those who did not support me as for those who did.
Many centuries ago, Saint Augustine, a saint of my church, wrote that a people was a multitude defined by the common objects of their love.
What are the common objects we love that define us as Americans?
I think I know.
Opportunity.
Security.
Liberty.
Dignity.
Respect.
Honor.
And, yes, the truth.
Recent weeks and months have taught us a painful lesson.
There is truth and there are lies.
Lies told for power and for profit.
And each of us has a duty and responsibility, as citizens, as Americans, and especially as leaders - leaders who have pledged to honor our Constitution and protect our nation - to defend the truth and to defeat the lies.
I understand that many Americans view the future with some fear and trepidation.
I understand they worry about their jobs, about taking care of their families, about what comes next.
I get it.
But the answer is not to turn inward, to retreat into competing factions, distrusting those who don't look like you do, or worship the way you do, or don't get their news from the same sources you do.
We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal.
We can do this if we open our souls instead of hardening our hearts.
If we show a little tolerance and humility.
If we're willing to stand in the other person's shoes just for a moment.
Because here is the thing about life: There is no accounting for what fate will deal you.There are some days when we need a hand.
There are other days when we're called on to lend one.
That is how we must be with one another.
And, if we are this way, our country will be stronger, more prosperous, more ready for the future.
My fellow Americans, in the work ahead of us, we will need each other.
We will need all our strength to persevere through this dark winter.
We are entering what may well be the toughest and deadliest period of the virus.
We must set aside the politics and finally face this pandemic as one nation.
I promise you this: as the Bible says weeping may endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning.
We will get through this, together
The world is watching today.
So here is my message to those beyond our borders: America has been tested and we have come out stronger for it.
We will repair our alliances and engage with the world once again.
Not to meet yesterday's challenges, but today's and tomorrow's.
We will lead not merely by the example of our power but by the power of our example.
We will be a strong and trusted partner for peace, progress, and security.
We have been through so much in this nation.
And, in my first act as President, I would like to ask you to join me in a moment of silent prayer to remember all those we lost this past year to the pandemic.
To those 400,000 fellow Americans - mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, sons and daughters, friends, neighbors, and co-workers.
We will honor them by becoming the people and nation we know we can and should be.
Let us say a silent prayer for those who lost their lives, for those they left behind, and for our country.
Amen.
This is a time of testing.
We face an attack on democracy and on truth.
A raging virus.
Growing inequity.
The sting of systemic racism.
A climate in crisis.
America's role in the world.
Any one of these would be enough to challenge us in profound ways.
But the fact is we face them all at once, presenting this nation with the gravest of responsibilities.
Now we must step up.
All of us.
It is a time for boldness, for there is so much to do.
And, this is certain.
We will be judged, you and I, for how we resolve the cascading crises of our era.
Will we rise to the occasion?
Will we master this rare and difficult hour?
Will we meet our obligations and pass along a new and better world for our children?
I believe we must and I believe we will.
And when we do, we will write the next chapter in the American story.
It's a story that might sound something like a song that means a lot to me.
It's called "American Anthem" and there is one verse stands out for me:
"The work and prayers
of centuries have brought us to this day
What shall be our legacy?
What will our children say?...
Let me know in my heart
When my days are through
America
America
I gave my best to you."Let us add our own work and prayers to the unfolding story of our nation.
If we do this then when our days are through our children and our children's children will say of us they gave their best.
They did their duty.
They healed a broken land.
My fellow Americans, I close today where I began, with a sacred oath.Before God and all of you I give you my word.
I will always level with you.
I will defend the Constitution.
I will defend our democracy.
I will defend America.
I will give my all in your service thinking not of power, but of possibilities.
Not of personal interest, but of the public good.
And together, we shall write an American story of hope, not fear.
Of unity, not division.
Of light, not darkness.
An American story of decency and dignity.
Of love and of healing.
Of greatness and of goodness.
May this be the story that guides us.
The story that inspires us.
The story that tells ages yet to come that we answered the call of history.
We met the moment.
That democracy and hope, truth and justice, did not die on our watch but thrived.
That our America secured liberty at home and stood once again as a beacon to the world.
That is what we owe our forbearers, one another, and generations to follow.
So, with purpose and resolve we turn to the tasks of our time.
Sustained by faith.
Driven by conviction.
And, devoted to one another and to this country we love with all our hearts.
May God bless America and may God protect our troops.
Thank you, America.
The star of the inauguration was undoubtedly 22 year old Amanda Gorman, whose poem and its delivery were stunning.
Biden takes office during a time of unprecedented challenges which will make his Presidency unique in any event. It's surreal start makes it, additionally, undoubtedly historic.
What can we add, assuming we should add anything?
We've just lived through an American tragedy, but we're not over it yet. Joe Biden takes office with, as noted, unprecedented challenges. Included in those challenges is the implosion of the Republican Party, which may not be noticeable out in the hinterlands, but which is in fact being felt at the centers of power. Coming out of the 2020 election stronger than it entered it, it's now split in two due to Donald Trump's insistence, and indeed increasingly delusional insistence, that he'd won when he had lost. The President took the country up to the brink of anarchy and gave it a push, the GOP fell. It lost the Senate and now its clearly in an internecine war that will dominate the next two years. While this occurs, the left wing of the Democratic Party, which had not done well overall, is now fully resurgent.
It's going to be an interesting four years.
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